You look down three thousand feet into a valley, stretching over an hundred miles in one direction, and more than half that distance in the other, in the midst of which runs the river Hudson, covered at this season with craft of various descriptions, which, from that great elevation, seem mimic boats upon a rivulet. At your feet a rocky precipice descends perpendicularly, the depth of which it is impossible to estimate, as it has never been explored, and loses itself, to the eye of the gazer from the summit, amidst the rude and tangled masses of primeval forest, stretching downward to the distant valley, verdantly sloping to the river's banks. This is the scene presented to the sojourner at the Mountain House, and its many changes, like those of a panorama, render the prospect intensely interesting, in every aspect of the weather. Having enjoyed this first gush of picturesque beauty, you are reminded, by the daily arrival of the proper vehicles at the door, of a scene of yet more mingled romance,—the cascades of _Canterskill_. These lie at the termination of a delightful woodland path, along the side of which flows a smooth and quiet stream, taking its rise in a lake upon which you bestow, as you pass, a gratified glance. Following this rivulet you come suddenly to the brink of a tremendous precipice, shelving down between woody mountains, with rough rocky ravines, seemingly unattainable by human feet. But your guide holds a clue, following which you soon attain a level formed of sandstone and gray-wacke, and await the fall of the water from the edge of the precipice, one hundred and seventy-five feet above. As the water at this season runs low, the proprietor has taken the precaution to dam it up above the precipice, and so lets it fall when a company of visiters demand it. This fall is very beautiful. No obstacle intervenes to break the silvery sheet as it descends, and, as it comes over the rough edges of the rock at top, it assumes a form as of feathery spray, which is sometimes so thin and vapory, as to float away without reaching the level at all. Descending eighty feet farther, you see the second fall, the termination of which is even more grand and savage than the upper level. Here you may see both falls at the same instant, and from a situation which challenges another attribute of grandeur and sublimity to enhance the perfect enchantment of the scene. * * * * * We lingered at Catskill several days in a sort of dreamy state of quiet enjoyment,—now fishing, now roving among the woods, now stretched on the brink of the Pine Orchard looking listlessly down upon the impenetrable forests, the smiling, sunny valleys, or the silver thread of water, on which seemed {699} “———the tall anchoring bark Diminished to her cock,—her cock a bouy Almost too small for sight”